


Dating for Non-Mathematicians

by missmollyetc



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-27
Updated: 2009-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-05 08:31:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmollyetc/pseuds/missmollyetc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What people really want is someone to listen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dating for Non-Mathematicians

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone please to blame [](http://audrarose.livejournal.com/profile)[**audrarose**](http://audrarose.livejournal.com/) for twisting my arm. Look, there's bruising!

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |  [numb3rs](http://missmollyetc.livejournal.com/tag/numb3rs)  
---|---  
  
_ **Ficathon FIC: Dating for Non-Mathematicians** _

Title: Dating for Non-Mathematicians

Pairing(s): Alan/Larry

Rating: G

Warning(s): Sweet enough to rot your teeth.

Summary: What people really want is someone to listen.

Author's Notes: Everyone please to blame [](http://audrarose.livejournal.com/profile)[**audrarose**](http://audrarose.livejournal.com/) for twisting my arm. Look, there's bruising!

Author's Notes (2): Once again, the glorious [](http://schnaucl.livejournal.com/profile)[**schnaucl**](http://schnaucl.livejournal.com/) was responsibly for beta-ing. She pulled it off rather well, don't you think?

Disclaimer: Numb3rs is the product of CBS and the Scott Brothers, and I make nothing from this while they rake in the millions. Which is how I like it. In other words? I. Made. It. Up.

 

 

 

Alan woke to a cool breeze heavy with scent wafting over his face and sneezed. He rolled over, sneezed again, and sat up, rubbing his nose. Gardenias. As much as Maggie had loved them, they were still the bane of his allergy season. He sighed, throat already feeling a bit thick, and looked over…at the empty space next to him in bed. Further along his line of sight, the glowing numerals of his alarm clock wavered and changed. One thirty a.m. on the nose, not to make a pun. He yawned, and patted the still warm pillow.

Well, he would have gotten up soon anyway. Alan pushed back his side of the quilt, bunching the covers into a thick tangle down the middle of the bed. He rose, snagging his robe from the chair next to the open window and shrugged it on.

Time was, he'd kept the room shut at night, but now the window was up for 'the air' and the door across the way stood half-closed, spilling gray light into the darkness of his room. Alan shook his head. It took some getting used to, this dating thing.

Alan skirted the edge of the bed, and walked toward the door.

'Dating.' Even the word conjured a vague sense of outrage. He was getting on in years, after all. Wasn't this sort of thing supposed to be behind him? Not the need for companionship, but the names that defined it? Girlfriend, boyfriend…lover. He made a face. Those types of words seemed more appropriate for his sons than himself. Except for the lover part, and some events fell under the heading of 'too much information' even for the Eppes.

No, he preferred quieter, more solid terms: wife, husband…friend. Those words spoke of permanency, injected a degree of intimacy he'd grown used to in marriage and refused to give up after thirty-five years. He just wasn't built for fly-by-night romance.

Neither was he built to go searching for absent 'friends' in the dead of night. Well, almost. Alan tugged the door all the way open, and looked out into the dimly lit hallway. He patted the dimmer switch he'd installed high on the wall--oh, back when Donny was still afraid of the dark--and stepped over the threshold.

Well, this felt familiar. He grinned to himself, hitching the belt of his robe a bit higher, and started down the hall.

It had been Don, really, who'd set his father to nightly walks around the house. He'd been so _quiet_\--even as a newborn--that for those first few months they'd lived in fear of missing some sudden catastrophe. So much so that by January, Alan's status as a confirmed nightowl had been cemented for the next twenty-odd years.

Not such a bad habit, after all. Looking in on the boys, checking the locks…every step created a memory. The older he got, the more interested he was in hanging on to those recollections, and adding new ones to the stacks. In that way, he supposed it wasn't such a bad thing that Charlie had bought the house--though, he doubted _this_ was what his son'd had in mind.

He chuckled and patted the lintel of Don's bedroom door in passing as he walked on. Charlie's room was next, no light spilling to the carpet. Charlie was at his brother's tonight, helping Don track down his latest criminal. One more event that took some getting used to, but it was…good that they were getting along now, working together.

The end of the hallway brought him up short. Alan looked down the flight of stairs. Light shone on the ground floor.

It just figured, didn't it. Almost cured of insomnia, so he starts dating an insomniac. Alan chuckled and stepped down.

The living room was empty, and the front room as well, but the overhead lamp glowed in the dining area. He could see the top of a curly head above the space where the table sat. The sounds of hurried writing reached his ears as he moved forward. He rubbed a hand through his own hair, attempting to flatten the more obstinate tufts.

"You know, I thought Charlie spending more time with his brother would keep my electricity bill down, but now…I'm thinking that might have been jumping the gun."

Larry put a hand to his neck, and tilted his head up to watch Alan's catch the light. Alan downgraded his chuckle to a small smile at first sight of Larry's bewildered squint. Ah, the math might call at every hour of the day, but that didn't mean all cylinders fired in the wee small ones.

"Hmm?" Larry clicked his tongue. "I, uh…" His pencil circled, then slowly stabbed the air. "I had a thought."

"And I'm sure it wasn't lonely."

Nice to have someone to banter with, or at, again. Alan sat down in the chair opposite Larry's workstation. He placed both hands on the table, and pointed his chin at the pile of papers across from him.

"No, as a matter of fact it wasn't."

Larry eyed his papers as the pencil swooped twice and landed at the top edge of the first sheet. He clicked his tongue again. Underneath the table, his bare toes poked into Alan's foot, then slid across his arch. Alan shivered, and cleared his throat.

"Any breakthroughs I should know about?" he asked.

He probably wouldn't understand the breakthrough, of course, but that had never stopped him with Charlie. In fact, raising Charlie was strangely good practice for surviving a relationship with his son's mentor, but Alan wasn't going to complain. When dealing with genius, best to keep all advantages available.

Larry's hands waved in the middle of the table, and Alan focused on the motion. You had to be a bit patient with Larry. His mind moved so quickly that his body constantly rushed to catch up. Besides, the faces he made were kind of cute.

"It's nothing of real importance," Larry finally said. "Just something…" One hand stopped revolving and returned to the paper. "A variation on the Schoolgirls' Problem."

Alan raised his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"The Schoolgirls' Problem," Larry said a bit louder. An amused smile curved his mouth, and Alan found himself returning the grin instead of protesting his very real _lack_ of hearing loss.

"You're doing Amita's homework now?" he asked.

A surprised laugh crinkled the skin around Larry's eyes and mouth. He sat back in his chair, and tapped his toes on Alan's feet. Even, white teeth bit into his lower lip as he scratched his pencil eraser behind one ear. He raised both hands to clasp around his head, putting his elbows on the table. Alan leaned forward as well.

"No, no, certainly not. The Schoolgirls' Problem is a combinatorics puzzle. A real…golden oldie of mathematics."

"I see. And you've found a new solution?"

Larry waggled a hand. "I don't know, maybe…more like a faster methodology for a more general set of parameters. You see, it answers the same basic question, but allows for a certain amount of numerical variance--which the actual puzzle does not."

"Really." Alan glanced at the smudged numbers decorating the paper. "And this includes schoolgirls."

"Yes, exactly!" Larry nodded vigorously. "In 1850 a Reverend Thomas Kirkman--"

Alan kept his mouth shut, but couldn't help an amused huff of breath. He didn't think Larry noticed, but he was used to that. The point of being with someone wasn't to garner constant attention, but to have that attention when it _mattered_.

"--put forth the challenge of a schoolmistress who wanted to take her students--"

"All female, I suppose."

"Yes…" A hand swooped. "Hence the title, now this schoolmistress takes a class of fifteen students on a daily walk arranged in five rows of three girls each. _Kirkman_ posed the question of…"--Pencil flicked left, then right--"whether or not the students could be arranged in such a way that no two girls walk in the same row more than once per week."

Alan crossed his arms over his chest, and nodded. He fought off a yawn. Man, it was late.

"Okay…"

"It's a fascinating puzzle."

"Well, of course. Schoolgirls."

"Alan."

He raised his hands. "Okay, okay! I'm sorry! It's a fascinating subject."

Larry's toes patted a warning, but a chuckle broke through the disappointed professor act. Alan rubbed a hand under his chin, and coughed into his fist. He made a show out of studying the papers across from him.

"So, are you going to explain this to me, or what? This looks like some equation you've got here."

The smile hit him right between the eyes and lodged there, shaking free any lingering thoughts of sleep--and inserting a few more pointed words about supposed cradle robbing. Though fifty-two was hardly too young for him, and Alan himself wasn't decrepit yet.

"I'd hardly call it a _breakthrough_\--little more than a nighttime distraction of course, but then… "--finger wag--"great things can come from such pastimes."

Alan was too old to blush, and so he blamed the slight heat on his face to allergies. Damn gardenias. He should take the whole plant out tomorrow.

The papers on the table were swiveled toward him. Larry beamed and patted the top page. He stood and came around the table, then pushed the nearest chair up next to Alan, and slid into the seat. One hand landed on Alan's shoulder, then carefully brushed down his arm, soft fingers briefly wrapping around his wrist. Alan swallowed against a suddenly dry mouth, as Larry tilted his head for a kiss.

Clearly, the kiss hadn't been intended as much more than a quick buss, but Alan followed Larry's head when the other man would have pulled away and pressed just a little harder. Math he might not always understand, but kissing? He'd graduated with honors. Finally, he sat back and waited for Larry to stop blinking and licking his lips. They had a puzzle to solve after all.

"Well?" he prompted. "Those schoolgirls won't arrange themselves, you know."

Fingers squeezed his wrist again as Larry bent closer, smiling with equal fondness at Alan and the paper on the table.

"It's connected to a more general solution," he said. "If N number of schoolgirls are divisible by three, then N students walking for N minus one divided by…"

 

End.


End file.
